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April 14, 2015

Why Evolutionary Ethics Fails to Account for Objective Morality

Two years ago, I had the chance to debate an atheist professor at Weber State University in Utah on the best explanation for the existence of objective moral values. The writings of Bill Craig and Paul Copan have shaped a lot of my thinking in this area, as I'm sure you'll see below. In my opening argument, I made the case for God as the ontological foundation for objective morality. Then I raised five problems for an evolutionary view of ethics that make it an implausible alternative. Here are the problems I outlined in the debate:

(1) Evolution cannot account for moral values: Moral values do not fit in the ontology of naturalism. On a naturalistic view, our moral values are the result of biological evolution, purely for the purpose of survival and reproduction. But how would such a herd morality be binding and true?

The position of the modern evolutionist...is that humans have an awareness of morality...because such an awareness is of biological worth. Morality is a biological adaptation no less than are hands and feet and teeth.... Considered as a rationally justifiable set of claims about an objective something, ethics is illusory. I appreciate that when somebody says “Love thy neighbor as thyself,” they think they are referring above and beyond themselves.... Nevertheless...such reference is truly without foundation. Morality is just an aid to survival and reproduction...and any deeper meaning is illusory…. [1]

J.L. Mackie, one of the most prominent atheist philosophers of the 20th century, said this: “Moral properties constitute so odd a cluster of qualities and relations that they are most unlikely to have arisen in the ordinary course of events, without an all-powerful god to create them.” [2]

(2) Evolution cannot account for moral obligations: If humans are simply more developed animals, why think there are moral duties to which they are obligated? Male great white sharks are under no obligation to refrain from forcibly copulating with female great whites. Male lions are under no obligation to refrain from killing all the young lion cubs in a pride they have just taken over. Notice, we do NOT use moral terms to describe such behavior. We do not call the shark’s behavior “rape” and we do not call the lion’s behavior “infanticide.”

Natural science is a descriptive enterprise, only telling us what is the case, not what ought to be the case. For example, nature can describe what it is to be healthy, but it cannot generate a moral obligation to be healthy.

Prominent American philosopher Richard Taylor recognizes this problem for naturalism:

The idea of political or legal obligation is clear enough…. Similarly, the idea of an obligation higher than this, referred to as moral obligation, is clear enough, provided reference to some lawgiver higher…than those of the state is understood. In other words, our moral obligations can…be understood as those that are imposed by God…. But what if this higher-than-human lawgiver is no longer taken into account? Does the concept of moral obligation…still make sense? … The concept of moral obligation [is] unintelligible apart from the idea of God. [3]

On a naturalistic view, there is nothing to issue moral commands and there is no one to serve as the appropriate authority standing behind our moral obligations. As Taylor states, in the absence of God, the concept of moral obligations is incoherent.

(3) Evolution cannot adequately explain human value: On a naturalistic evolutionary scenario, human beings are nothing special. The universe comes into existence through the Big Bang and, through a blind process of chance and necessity, evolves all the way through to us. The same process that coughed up humans also coughed up bacteria. Thus, there is nothing intrinsically valuable about being human. Indeed, on this view, to think humans beings are special is to be guilty of speciesism, the view that one’s own species is somehow superior to other species.

In a universe of blind physical forces and genetic replication, some people are going to get hurt, other people are going to get lucky, and you won’t find any rhyme or reason in it, or any justice. The universe that we observe has precisely the properties we should expect if there is, at bottom, no design, no purpose, no evil and no good, nothing but blind, pitiless indifference…. DNA neither knows nor cares. DNA just is. [4]

But what other result should we expect from valueless, cause-and-effect physical processes? There is no reason to think that an impersonal, valueless process could produce valuable, rights-bearing persons.

(4) Evolution cannot adequately explain moral accountability: If God does not exist, there is no basis for moral accountability. On naturalism, who or what imposes moral obligations upon us? And who or what would hold us to those obligations? In a purely material universe, there is no moral accountability. What difference would it make to disregard your moral obligations to whomever? In an atheistic universe, why would you ever set aside self-interest for self-sacrifice?

(5) Evolution cannot adequately explain human freedom: If we are the products of evolutionary forces, how did moral freedom and responsibility emerge? There is no reason to think, given our supposed materialistic and deterministic origins, that we have free will. Atheist philosopher Thomas Nagel states that there is “no room for agency in a world of neural impulses, chemical reactions, and bone and muscle movements”; naturalism strongly suggests that we are “helpless” and “not responsible” for our actions. [5]

Of course, if there is no free will, then no one is morally responsible for anything. Determinism puts an end to objective moral duties because on this worldview, we have no control over what we do. We are nothing more than puppets in a cause-and-effect universe.

I think one of the stronger arguments against evolution being a source of anything regarding morality is the is-ought problem. Just because evolution (nature) might have put an idea in our minds about morality doesn't mean we ought to follow it. But that's contradictory to the point of morality, which is to establish the ought.

This answers RonH's problem (although other answers are possible to it), by getting to the obvious point. Morality is about 'ought', and the 'is' cannot define an 'ought', at least not to an atheist/materialist.

For example, if humans are only products of evolution, then religion is an outcome of evolution. Since it is true that religion 'is' from evolution, then shouldn't we 'ought' to follow it? This is exact same kind of claim made by those who would establish morality from evolution. But doing so would force them into rejecting the is-ought distinction. Once that's rejected, ANYTHING that evolution could have imbued humans with becomes fair game for moral behavior.

Let's just grant the Philosophical Naturalist all the stuff of Volition and of Trust.

His moral problems are still not solved.

As in:

Sam Harris connotes a flavor of freedom housed within Compulsion A vs. Compulsion B, or, as he states, “….we choose but we cannot choose what we choose…..”. A subset of Theists occasionally posit that we are morally culpable agents who can only choose between "Level of Badness A" vs. "Level of Badness B", or, we essentially are unable to choose Good and we never desire the Good, and we only – always – desire to harm, to hurt, to do evil. We never sacrifice our own self for another. We never chose the Good. We never "sin-not" - do to our Nature, unless, that is, we are Christians - at which point a Christian's sins are addressed in similarly blurry semantics hedging in murky semantics on the stuff of actually (freely) choosing Evil and Good, Light and Dark as the love we desired for our child prior to becoming a Christian is inexplicably evil while the love we desire for our child now as a Christian is inexplicably not evil.

In both of those descriptives culpability is only alluded to but never pin pointed as such pertains to “the man in motion right here, right now, this moment”. In short, all of the above suffer the same incoherent attempt to describe our actual moral landscape.

Evolutionary morality is an oxymoron for obvious reasons as are various Theistic "descriptives" which cannot actually reach any higher than Harris in terms of what "we as beings actually do right here in this moment".

Where Harris and Materialism exclude both Volition and the Good from reality, those Theistic brands briefly touched on exclude both Volition and the Good from the created agent – the supposed moral agent – not from reality, but from all but God. God alone houses volition, God alone desires love for my child. I don’t. I never desire good. I only desire evil. Always. And I never lose my life for my child. Because I cannot choose good. Unless I’m a Christian – in which case it isn’t me now desiring good - and so on. A bit of hyperbole there to perhaps define what the outsider looking in hears and sees. And rejects (for good reasons).

Fortunately there is the actual landscape of God and Man, of the immutable love of the Necessary Being on the one hand and Man in his array of various mutable and contingent locations on the other hand. Inside of that created arena it is the actual state of affairs that volition and trust's motions cannot steal from God - cannot share God's Glory, and, just the same, volition and trust's motions cannot-not-exist.

We begin to discover that volition and faith (trust’ motions) grant Man just nothing at all. He is yet insufficient with or without the true Self as his stopping point (Volition), with our without faith (trust’s motions amid Self/Other). This is why we can grant the materialist any degree of volition he pleads for as such still fails to extricate love’s stopping point there at the end of ad infinitum – the materialist even still forced to pull into his ontology that fateful As-If – ever the subtle stench of a noble lie just one step beyond his own nature-less ends void of final causes, void of love’s categorical imperative at the end of the line.

It is the case that Volition and Faith cannot not exist, that is to say, Volition and Trust’s free motions amid Self/Other cannot not exist, and, also, these cannot steal glory from God, and, also, we can grant both of these to the materialist and even still such a gift fails to grant the Materialist the necessary and sufficient, the needed substrate of finality. The conclusion by the Materialist that such a gift would solve all his moral problems is simply incoherent. Even unsophisticated. And certainly shortsighted in relation to ontological A’s and Z’s. Similarly, the Theist who is forever afraid of Volition, forever afraid of Faith there in Hebrews 11, of Trust amid Self/Other, as somehow damaging to God’s Power or Glory is for all the same reasons just as short sighted in relation to the necessary and sufficient, to ontological A’s and Z’s. While some subsets of Theism fear Volition and Faith (Trust’s free motions amid Self/Other) being found either in Materialism or in any Theism, such fear is based on the same unthoughtful frames which the Materialists also rest on as such mistakenly concludes that it is Volition itself, or that it is Trust amid Self/Other itself, or that it is both, which somehow sums to the necessary and sufficient inside of the topic at hand.

That conclusion is simply incoherent. Even unsophisticated. And certainly shortsighted in relation to ontological A’s and Z’s.

And then came the fateful topography of Genesis through Revelations, the only genre of its kind on planet Earth. We find inside of Trinity an uncanny topography as we approach the many peculiarities of the moral landscape. Therein we begin to find contours of the Hard Stop of the Great I AM in all that is the Privation of Personhood’s Self in all which sums to God Himself, Necessity Himself, even as we find contours of the Hard Stop of love's ceaseless reciprocity amid all that is Self/Other there within love’s enigmatic Self-Sacrifice ever void of that which we call first and ever void of that which we call last as Trinity’s milieu manifests moral topography wholly unavailable to all other paradigmatic stopping points.

Inside of our own contingent world our own sightline discovers – within the stuff of time and physicality – all such lines converging, seamlessly, in Christ.

Well, if you define morality as something that can't be explained by evolution, then low and behold!, morality can't be explained by evolution. The problem is: How do you know your definition is right?

Brett gives five reasons in the post to think objective morality can't be explained by evolution.

And, Amy, to complete the response to Ron, Brett never does something like this:

"Morality" == "The evolutionarily inexplicable set of truths such that..."

Instead, he identifies several qualities that there is near unanimity the are attributes of morality.

If you are going to use the term "morality" in a standard way, you are going to have to say that, for example, one is accountable for one's violations of the moral code. If you say, "no, I don't think that's the case" you're kinda speaking a different language.

So accountability certainly is part of the definition of "morality." Brett then proceeds to argue that evolution cannot explain for moral accountability.

No one argued punishment as the "it" which "makes Good, you know, Good". At least Christianity does not argue that.

That isn't where Good starts nor where Good stops. We can remove life after death from Man and that does not detract from the Christian's Start/Stop of the Good, and, for the same reasons, that move also fails to grant the naturalists any progress in his own moral alphabet.

In the same way, and for the same reasons, we can just grant actual, full blown volition to the naturalist and that move will solve - exactly - none of his moral problems.

And evolution can't "say" anything at all, certainly not about differentiation of Good/Evil nor about its own vacuous chain of insolvent IOU's amid its own truth predicates.

BTW, punishment in life or after death is one way that someone might be held accountable for for wrongdoing.

Plato thought differently. Not about accountability being part of the meaning of "morality". He thought that punishment was not the sole means by which we are held accountable for wrongdoing. That's why he said that the worst fate imaginable was to be evil and to go unpunished. Better to be good and be punished unjustly than that. For Plato, saying that you are evil and 'got away' without punishment is like saying you have cancer and 'got away' without treatment.

Ultimately, I think this is close to the Christian view. God doesn't punish you in Hell for your wrongdoing. That's not how you are held accountable. The way you are held accountable is that your are allowed to live, for all eternity, in your sin. It's you and your sin that make it Hell.

From a big picture viewpoint, the overwhelming flaw of this whole argument is it assumes objective morality exists. If you assume it doesn't then the argument disappears quickly.

I could pick any of the points to find issue with, but specifically on #4:
"In an atheistic universe, why would you ever set aside self-interest for self-sacrifice?"

The level of radical self sacrifice within the animal kingdom dwarfs our own.
Why is that? Well, those individuals within a species who sacrificed themselves passed their genes on more successfully then those that did not!

What a moral law has in common with natural law is the fact that it is not up to you whether it applies to you.

Where it is different is that you can violate a law of morality, but not a law of nature.

This is why we can say that following the law is right and violating the law is wrong.

If it's up to you whether a law applies to you, then, whatever charms the law may have, it's not a moral law.

Maybe you would like to use words differently so that morality can refer to something you make up and are free to unmake up. Good luck with the language proposal, but that's just not what the word means in standard use.

Given standard use, it seems that you are saying there just is no such thing as a moral law...as a law where it's not up to you whether that law applies to you, but it is up to you whether you will follow it.

A dictionary definition can match up with usage without matching up with the world.

If I know that it is universally understood that the root chakra is a node of the subtle body located at the base of the spine, the pelvic floor, and the first three vertebrae, then I know something about what people mean when they say 'root chakra'.

Do you really not see that to know something about 'root chakra', as a real thing in the world, I would need to know something completely different than what people understand the term 'root chakra' to mean?

If you do see that, what would I need to understand 'root chakra' as a real thing in the world?

It is said that the root chakra is comprised of whatever grounds you to stability in your life.

(I'd rather it was said charkra comprises whatever grounds you to stability in your life. But that's another matter.)

Evolution can't explain chakra, the node in the subtle body. But it might very well be able to explain 'whatever grounds you to stability in your life'.

The Theist isn't arguing that naturalism *doesn't* end in fictions, useful and otherwise, where morality is concerned. If love's categorical imperative ain't there at the end of the line obligating reason to herself - if that ontology just ain't true about the world - well the Theist agrees with the Naturalist's conclusion there - as his naturalism has no choice but to bite said bullet.

Population densities and thinning of the herds to maintain said stability seemed to be a popular theme.

It depended on which dictionary one looked in.

Funny how that works.

Thinning of the herds..... Stability...... Well, that does describe the real world and real living things.

In all sorts of ways.

The OP's general point seems unchallenged should we venture down that road.

The purely descriptive is all the Naturalists can reach short of some sort of irrationally conditioned autohypnotic prescriptive. Some dictionaries call such a thing a "fantasy".

But again - it depends on which dictionary one prefers. Or uses. Or prefers to use.

Funny how that works.

If "evolution" wrote all the dictionaries, well, then it's all a wash of equivalency, a solvent which dissolves all containers, even its own.

In the end Morality suffers the same fate as Logic - it's just a chain of IOU's. Morality chasing Logic. Logic chasing Morality. Whatever. Either way we end up with a comedy - one insolvent chain of IOU's chasing its own tail which happens to be another insolvent chain of IOU's.

Neither Hume nor logic find in such a fantasy as that any such thing as love's categorical imperative at the end of naturalism's insolvent chain of IOU's which obligates reason to chase after her. The phrase "Morally Unreasonable" ends in print there in the comedy's monologue.

But then, that is the point of the OP.

A point thus far unchallenged.

Biting said bullets is not a refutation of the vacuous and insolvent status of said chain of IOU's. Rather, it is an affirmation of the cogency of the OP.

Never said they did. They do however have an awful lot to do with what words mean.

I might add that definitions only came under discussion because you seemed to think that Brett had cooked up some novel definition of morality just so that evolution would not be able to explain morality. An idea that, I think, is now in tatters.

A dictionary definition can match up with usage without matching up with the world.

Usage is part of the world. If a definition, whether from a dictionary or not, matches usage it matches all of the world that it is logically possible for a definition to match up to.

Do you really not see that to know something about 'root chakra', as a real thing in the world, I would need to know something completely different than what people understand the term 'root chakra' to mean?

It seems to me, Ron, that it is you who are woefully unable to see this. If you saw this, you wouldn't say things like this:

And when I say 'right', I don't mean that the definition is nearly unanimously agreed upon.

No, by 'right', I mean that the definition describes a thing in the world as it really is.

The question of what a word means is a different question from whether it refers to anything real.

Definitions provide an answer to the first question and have little to say about the second question.

(Exception: There are some claims, like "Bachelors are unmarried", that are true by definition. Every definition is, itself, just such a claim.)

Definitions cannot be right because they describe a thing in the world as it really is.

(Exception: If the thing in the world being described is a word, and it is described as it really is used by a group of language speakers, then the definition is right because it describes how the word really is used.)

What would I need to understand 'root chakra' as a real thing in the world?

Do you mean "What would I need to know to know that root chakras exist?"

I'm going to assume that you correctly expressed the standard meaning of "root chakra" when you said this:

The root chakra is a node of the subtle body located at the base of the spine, the pelvic floor, and the first three vertebrae

If so, I guess you'd need to know things like this:

Subtle bodies exist.

Subtle bodies have nodes.

One of those nodes exist in the region of the base of the spine, the pelvic floor, and the first three vertebrae.

Then you said this:

Evolution can't explain chakra, the node in the subtle body. But it might very well be able to explain 'whatever grounds you to stability in your life'.

OK so, now, what the point of this analogy?

Is it that evolution cannot explain morality? Is it that that's OK because morality doesn't exist any more than root chakras do? Is that because you've got something just as good as morality, something you offer as a substitute for morality, that evolution can explain?

If that's it, then...

One: It's nice to see that you finally admit that Brett isn't guilty of some sort of circularity.

Two: I doubt very much that the substitute for morality that evolution can explain is good at all, let alone just as good as morality.

What is a definition? It is nothing more than the determination to use a word in a certain way. Given that I use the word in the way the definition outlines, the definition can hardly be criticized as false.

If I define the term "Addler" as "A bobkin that can add." Then, by gum, Addlers are exactly bobkins that can add.

This is not to say that there is no basis for criticizing definitions. It seems to me that there are two main criticisms you can make:

Definitions can depart too far from from standard usage.

Yes, you are free to use the term "theist" to refer to people who disbelieve in God, but don't expect to be understood by other speakers of English.

Definitions can be unhelpful in the drawing of inferences.

Yes, you are free to define "blue" as "bleen before t and grue after", where "bleen" itself is defined ostensively by pointing at blue things before t, and green things after and "grue" is defined by pointing at green things before t and blue things after. But such a definition is not nearly so helpful as a simple ostensive definition, where you always point at something blue and say the word "blue".

Do you think that argument really turns on the mere terminological convenience of the phrase "moral law"?

The 'counter-example' you give is telling though...because there can be no justice, not among human beings, without a legal system. No, justice is not exactly the same thing as a legal system. For one thing, a legal system can be unjust. But it is quite impossible for justice ever to be realized without a system of laws.

Here is, quite literally, the dictionary definition of the term morality:
"a particular system of values and principles of conduct, especially one held by a specified person or society."
Let's ask at a few questions:
1. Do humans have the intellectual capacity (resulting from evolution) to form societies (define that term as you will)?
2. Do humans have the intellectual capacity (resulting from evolution) to define codes of conduct for those societies?
3. Do humans have the intellectual capacity (resulting from evolution) to feel a sense of obligation to obey codes of conduct defined by society?

I believe the answer to all three questions is yes.

I object to the term moral law if it implies an external (to the society) origin. If its defined within the society, then I have no objection.
You used natural law in an early comment, which lead me to believe you were equating the source of natural and moral laws. I think this is our disagreement.

Here is, quite literally, the dictionary definition of the term morality:
"a particular system of values and principles of conduct, especially one held by a specified person or society."

Oh. That's the dictionary definition is it.

Here is what Dictionary.com has to say:

conformity to the rules of right conduct; moral or virtuous conduct.

moral quality or character.

virtue in sexual matters; chastity.

a doctrine or system of morals.

moral instruction; a moral lesson, precept, discourse, or utterance.

morality play.

I count 6 definitions. I note that the #1 definition has to do with following rules.

The real question of objectivity is just this: Is it up to any person or group of persons whether the rules apply to them?

If we're talking about morality, the answer is "no". If it is up to a person or group of persons whether the rules apply, then the rules in question are ipso facto not rules of morality.

If societies were in control of whether moral rules apply, then it would be impossible for there to be any such thing as an immoral society. But there clearly is such a thing as an immoral society. It is therefore false that the application of moral rules is decided by societies.